1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of methods for automatically generating natural language text. More particularly, the invention pertains to generating text which helps a user to compare the features of different products in a given category, and which gives the user recommendations as to which products are best suited to the user's individual needs.
2. Description of Related Art
We are aware of four main examples of software systems which perform some of the same functions as the present invention, but none of which performs all of the functions in combination. Two of these systems are research prototypes described in academic publications; one is a type of interactive wizard found on several commercial websites; and one is a commercial software product for creating web-based expert systems.
The ILEX system (O'Donnell et al., 2000) is designed to generate textual descriptions of objects, such as museum artifacts, using information about the objects stored in a generic relational database. By providing the system with extra information about the semantics of the database, and linguistic resources with which to describe the database objects, the developer can improve the quality and readability of the text generated by the system. Like the present invention, ILEX uses a combination of generic text generation rules and domain-specific lexicon, provided by the developer, to generate textual descriptions. However, unlike the present invention, ILEX requires considerable specialized expertise for the developer to specify the linguistic resources and semantic properties of the database, making this a somewhat open-ended task, rather than a concretely specified and finite process. ILEX is also not specialized to the task of comparing or recommending products.
Carenini (2000) and Carenini & Moore (2000) have described an experimental software system that generates recommendations for users choosing a house in a given neighborhood, based on various attributes of the available houses. Like the present invention, the system generates textual recommendations which are tailored to the user's preferences, and which make use of generic rhetorical patterns for explaining the best features of a given house. However, unlike the present invention, the system is custom-built for the purpose of selecting houses, and does not provide a process for easily extending its domain to other types of products. Its textual output is also limited to recommendations of a particular house, and does not extend to comparisons of two or more houses.
Several commercial web sites, such as www.activebuyersguide.com and www.deja.com, offer wizards that let users search for products in a given category, and rank products according to the user's preferences. Like the present invention, these wizards perform customized ranking of products based on a weighted combination of scores for various features, and lets the user compare products side-by-side, while recommending the top-ranked products. However, unlike the present invention, they do not generate natural language texts to explain comparisons or recommendations, or how they relate to the user's preferences.
The CORVID expert system shell (www.exsys.com) from EXSYS, Inc., of Albuquerque, NM can be used to develop web-based product selection wizards, which recommend products to users based on their preferences. Like the present invention, this product lets the developer create numerous product comparison guides for different product types, and these guides can include natural language explanations of product features. However, unlike the present invention, this product requires the developer to create the logical rules for matching, weighting and scoring product features from scratch for each new product type, as well as the text generation rules. It also does not generate textual descriptions for side-by-side product comparisons.